“Speaking with people. How to collaborate with and deliver value for your customers.” It’s easy to say that we need to have “customer collaboration”, but how can we do this effectively? One way is by speaking to people, but what do you do with the information gathered to deliver valuable outcomes for them? What does “human centred design”, “service design” and “design thinking” mean? How can we use “design sprints” and how can this be revalidated through the shorter feedback loops and frequent delivery that working with agility insists upon? It’s all connected to human factors so let’s learn how these can combine to help us get closer to our customers and really deliver! Catherine Hills is UX and Service Design Director at RMIT Online. An accomplished and collaborative agile human-centered experience designer and research lead, she has worked for a range of businesses including ANZ Banking Group, SEEK, REA Group, Thoughtworks, 99designs, Envato and the University of Melbourne. Catherine is a seasoned Agile UX practice, delivery lead and people coach, with experience in product discovery and innovation. Catherine entered industry as a graphic and interaction designer and front-end engineer. Since then, her experience has been gathered in organisations in both the United Kingdom and Australia. Catherine has led design and research in digital agencies, publishing companies, education, technology and startups. https://www.1stconf.com/speakers/#catherineh

1. Service Design
& Design Thinking
Catherine Hills | @daughterofbev
© Catherine Hills 2019
“Speaking with people. How to collaborate
with and deliver value for your customers.”

2. Driving growth, better
experiences, innovation
and collaboration with
human-centred design
and agile approaches

3. Provides your team with
purpose and meaningful
objectives

4. In organisations,
where do ideas often
start?
It depends...
● Entrepreneur
● Founder
● Business Sponsor
● Creative
● A team member
● CEO
● HiPPO
● The team
● Group think
● In the shower
● etc.

5. Symptoms of output
over outcome cultures:
We’re all too busy to work this out together.
People will think I’m stupid if I don’t have the right answer!
I’m in charge, I want my ideas to take centre stage.
My boss and/or colleagues will think I’m incompetent if I don’t
come up with a something brilliant and deliver it immediately.
My idea is better than theirs.
I’m right and they’re wrong.
No one listens to me.
I thought of that already, it doesn’t work.
We’re too busy to speak to customers. We just need to deliver.
I need to meet my KPIs and get my bonus!!
Who are our customers? I’ve never spoken to a user before.

7. Speaking with customers or users
helps provide better outcomes

8. In organisations, where
do the best opportunities
for customer value
creation and innovation
come from?
Speaking with people.
Eg. customers, users, prospects
By understanding their needs,
goals and jobs to be done.

9. Q.
Who are our customers?
And who are our users?

10. Q.
What are the front and backstage
interactions we need to consider?

11. Q.
What jobs are our customers and
users hiring our systems, products
and services to do?

12. Q.
What value can we create for our
customers and users, and ourselves?

13. A:
Involve the whole team
Ideally, cross-functionally

14. 3 Lenses of HCD/Innovation (IDEO), Double Diamond/Design Thinking (IDEO/Stanford) & Heart of Agile (Cockburn)
Opportunity backlog
Ideas to test eg.
concepts,
prototypes
Where do
we start?
Iterate on learning, increase
confidence & fidelity
Eg. Design thinking, sprint ahead,
sprint 0, design sprint etc
Outcomes
over outputs

15. Human Centred
Design & Agile
Brings us closer to the customer
and is also great for the team
if done in collaboration
Being Human Centred* is intended
to help us identify customer value
through:
● Gathering data eg. speaking with people
(qualitative) and numbers (quantitative)
● Co-creating via collaboration
● Creating a shared understanding of the
problem and proposed solution space
● Iterating, continuously adjusting and
improving via prototyping approaches
*Based on Action Research and Participatory Design

16. Speaking with
everyone involved
helps!

17. Who should
you speak to?
People who use your the
things you design and
engineer, prospective
customers, employees,
partners, the works!
Prospects
Suspects
Leads
New/Opportunity
Markets
Loyal
Referring
Advocate
Promoters
At risk
Lapsed
Unhappy
Potential Detractors
New
Novice
Active customers/users
Repeat
Current Customer/User
Call Centre
Customer Support
Sales
Account Managers
Staff
Team
Subject Matter Experts
Partners
Business Sponsors
The People Who Build It!

18. User &
Customer Goals,
Pain Points,
Gain Creators,
Dependencies,
Risks,
Opportunities
Value Proposition,
Ideas,
Market-Fit,
Objectives,
Key Results,
Outcomes

19. What problem are you
trying to solve?

20. This isn’t big design
up front, it’s data
collection

21. Data collection for
discovery and exploration

22. Q.
What outcomes are you
seeking to define?

23. What are your goals?
Starting a new business
from scratch3
Reviewing your existing
business model 2
Innovating and
extending into new
business verticals
across your ecosystem
1

24. Desirability
People, inc:
Customers, Partners
Employees and/or Users
Questions you might ask:
● What are their goals?
● What are their expectations?
● What are their perceptions?
● What did they do?
● Would they do it again?
● Current pain points?
● What’s working well?
● Why do they think, feel, say, do?
● What is their relationship with your
brand?
● What jobs are they hiring your
product/system or service to do?

25. What might we do with desirability information?
Source: Empathy Map Canvas (Gamestorming) | VP & BM Canvas (Strategyzer)

26. Feasibility
Feasibility
People, props and processes*
*not just tech
eg. People (Staff, Partners), Props
(physical or digital), Processes
(to complete a customer journey)
Questions you might ask:
● Current pain points?
● What’s working well?
● What are the dependencies?
● What effort is involved?
● Who is affected?
● What effort is required?
● Are there any risks?
Outputs: eg. compliance, regulatory, business
rules, technology constraints, physical
constraints, design constraints etc.

27. What might we do with feasibility information?
Source: Service Design 101 & Service Design Blueprint 101 (NN Group) | Amazon Value Chain (Kandemirli, 2008)
Designed around the customer
Designed around the business

28. Feasibility
Viability
The Dollars
Consider the relationships between the value
proposition and business model.
Is this of monetary value to the organisation?
Is this new model part of our business intent,
values and vision?
Questions you might ask:
● Why would we invest time and $ in this?
● Who are our high value customers?
● What is our target market?
● Is there customer demand?
● What is the cost of delay?
● How are we paying for it?
● Would customers pay for it?
● Is this a new business model?
● What will be our key results?
● What’s our breakeven point?
● Could another business acquisition bring
this into our portfolio?
● Is this a new venture?

29. What might we do with viability information?
Source: Empathy Map & Value Prop Canvas (Strategyzer) | Lean Canvas (Ach Maurya)

30. Q.
How might you execute
on this data and
opportunities?

31. Then we enter
the messy place,
in order to
create clarity,
design thinking

32. We need to start
from somewhere

33. To make sense
of the data
presented to us

34. Generate ideas
and create
prototypes of
potential solutions
or opportunities
to test

35. Then learn by using
the people, props
and processes that
might interact with
these ideas to help us

36. These are playful
approaches that might
feel uncomfortable, at
first, but are actually fun
and great for the team.

38. Note: this always requires
speaking with people again

39. How can HCD &
design thinking
be done
collaboratively?

40. Case study 1

41. Case Study 1
Initiative goals:
● Establish knowledge and
benchmark experience for high
value customer groups per
business vertical
● Create current state
understanding via preliminary
service modelling and customer
journey elaboration
● Establish a vision target state
● Create tools the teams could use
● Take the organisation on the
journey
Business
stakeholder and
partner interviews
Low fidelity
service blueprint
Customer and
prospect
interviews - 3
business verticals
Current state
journey delivery
Vision workshops
- customers and
prospects
Playback and
prioritisation -
stakeholders
Concept testing -
Customers and
prospects
Vision delivery
Vision workshops
- stakeholders

42. Case Study 1
Learnings:
● Regular ‘all hands’ and all
company showcases
● Weekly ‘steerco’ check-ins with
management team post-current
state journey elaboration
● Invited all staff to sign up to
interview and testing schedules
on journeys
● Continuous iteration
● Posted updates on Slack
regularly to encourage
participation
Used Slack to create a #speak-with
customers channel, post updates and
schedule user research and testing
observations
Used Excel to create a mid-fidelity
customer journey that could be
interacted with, version controlled and
contributed to as experiences changed
over time (in line with the vision)

43. Case study 2

44. Case Study 2
Initiative goals:
● Unpack ‘wicked problem’ of
linkout customer experience
● How to attract customers back
into the ecosystem
● Establish a give to get
proposition to test revenue
opportunities and define a
roadmap for untapped customer
revenue
Started with
prototypes and
assumptions
Low number of
customer
interviews (less
than five)
Vision Workshops
had already
commenced with
steer co
Restarted workshop
discussions with
more stakeholders
Established new
confident
prototype ideas
Kicked off
‘customer advisory
board’ interviews,
testing prototype
feedback
Returned to
current state to
establish ‘state of
play’
Elaborated on
potential
alternative
journeys
Reviewed vision
workshops in light
of new information

45. Case Study 2
Learnings:
● Approach started out as business-oriented,
driven by assumptions, high effort at the
beginning with low return on value for
team/org
● Jobs to be done rankings were considered to be
of different prioritised importance eg.
illuminating a say-do gap with customers
● Customer advisory boards with high value
customers couldn’t have happened sooner to
pursue information on actual needs versus
assumed needs
● More regular customer interaction

46. Case study 3

47. Case Study 3
Initiative goals:
● Understand customer use of
three banking system verticals
● Run collaborative research with
whole team
● Understand validity of internal
assumption that experience
should be the same for all
customers
BA Review had
taken place,
recommendations
made to GM
Taking the
assumption,
created a strategy
of inquiry
Undertook IA and
Content review of
3 banking system
verticals
Identified
commonality/differ
ences across
system verticals
Most affected -
SMB customers -
ran interviews with
these people
Collaborative
interviews run,
cross-functional
and SME
observers
Workshop with
cross-functional
teams
Findings to
roadmap
recommendations
& persona-lite
Developed
hypotheses based
on IA, Content
and BA review

48. Case Study 3
Learnings:
● The customer voice was embedded in team conversations
● Regular showcases and a team ‘insights’ wall made progress
visible and available to any stakeholder who walked past or
requested a walk through
● Collaborative research and workshops were fun the team
bonded and a shared understanding was created via sharing
user interview stories collaboratively.
● A better potential outcome for customers based on customer
needs and goals, inc. proposed new business model and value
proposition

49. #1
Speaking with people
is a way of limiting
risk and saves time in
the long run

50. #2
Adopt a learning
mindset, you are no
longer the expert

51. #3
Practice the skills of
active listing, being
constantly curious and
asking open-ended
questions

52. Speaking with people
and hearing their stories,
dreams and aspirations
is at once a privilege and
a humbling experience.
Be good to each other.
Be good to your customers and users.
Create great experiences.

53. Thank you
Catherine Hills
© Catherine Hills 2019
Find me here:
Twitter @daughterofbev
LinkedIn catherine-hills-96a1b515